Wendell Potter Speaks In Favor Of The Health Care Reform Bill
You may remember Wendell Potter, the former Vice President of corporate communications at CIGNA, one of the largest health insurance companies in the US. Now a fellow at the Center for Media and Democracy, he gave senate testimony as a whistleblower last year against the HMO industry.
I quoted him then from an interview on Bill Moyers Journal about that testimony. He was on Moyers’ program again this weekend. From the transcript:
BILL MOYERS: So I hear Wendell Potter saying that if he were in the Senate or the House, he would vote for this reform?
WENDELL POTTER: I would vote for it. I was distraught when I saw what happened, what I saw the Senate voting on. But then I realized, you know, I studied a lot of these efforts over the past many years to get reform. And often we’ve come short because we’ve tried to get the perfect, and we’ve never been able to get anything as a consequence. … We need to have a foundation. And this may seem to be not an adequate foundation for a lot of people, but there are more than 50 million people in this country who don’t have insurance. I don’t want to go back and tell them, “I’m sorry. We just couldn’t get a good enough bill. So you’re going to have to wait to who knows when. Maybe you won’t live long enough.” 45 thousand people, Bill, die every year because they don’t have health insurance coverage. And that’s recent. In years to come, that will increase. People can’t wait any longer.
It’s Sunday morning, so I’ll go ahead and bloviate a bit about my own position on the health care bill…
For all the talk that Obama made a mistake putting it first, it was now or never in my lifetime. For all the criticism of how he did it, he would have the bill done already had Martha Coakley not treated her race like a walk in the park. For all the criticism of reconciliation, “I’m rubber you’re glue, whatever you say bounces off of me and sticks to you!”
To the criticism that the benefits don’t kick in until years down the road, I note that these benefits do kick in right away:
- The medicare drug coverage doughnut hole is closed
- Insurance companies can’t exclude coverage of preexisting illnesses
- No more recision
Those sound like benefits citizens, voters, will experience immediately. That helps Dems some in the November elections. If health care reform doesn’t pass, Obama tried and failed. He’ll get some small credit for that. He’ll recover. Dems won’t. Much bigger losses in the House; possible loss of control in the Senate (as upsetting as Brown in Massachusetts, and would require the same perfect storm conditions).
12 Responses to “Wendell Potter Speaks In Favor Of The Health Care Reform Bill”
JOE: Scroll to bottom of this response. Side note.
I view Obama somewhat more dimly at the moment than any ex-HMO lefty celeb poster child. There is no business misusing the federal government to exploit the childish in this country, exhibiting anger that rates are “too high,” with the implication that the federal government will encroach into state regulatory affairs and engage in price controls and other nonsense. That's a debased appeal to the debated voters, but the rest of us expect better. But, oh, well, desperate times for desperate Dems call for desperate measures.
If the bill has good essential reform elements, it's worth pursuing and the Dems are desperate to pass something at this point, no matter how bad (and this bill has bad features as well). Yes, it is Congress that primarily looks bad here because it's Congress that overreached all year, fell apart over health care “reform,” and now must recover. The far left already is unsatisfied, and now increasingly more moderate or mainstream Dems are upset at ineffectiveness. While the GOP is compelled more than ever to resist anything the Dems do, the GOP is irrevelent here; it's all up to you Dems to get over your squabbles over what should be trivial or non-points like abortion. It's pretty bad when you not only have thrown away the most power you've held in ages, but if you can't do whatever it takes to misuse and exploit a device (reconciliation) in the legislative process that gives you yet another advantage over the GOP.
It's the Congressional Dems at this point that have to either recover, or fall (Waterloo, for THEM, not Obama).
JOE: Elizabeth Warren (you're a fan of hers) KICKED ASS on Charlie Rose's show last week. Note & file.
Get rid of Geithner, keep her. She is Cabinet level material. That's coming from a non-lefty critic of hers.
http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/10292
Sadly, I agree (even if I do think the GOP gets away with shenanigans like reconciliation all the time).
On Charlie Rose, thanks for the pointer. I will check it out. GPB in Georgia only recently started carrying the program. It's gone from their listings again. I'm not sure what happened or if it will be back.
If the GOP has abused reconciliation (I believe it may have with welfare reform, which is not strictly a budget-related item, while tax cuts are, even if tax policy decisions are stretching things, too), then the Dems can. I don't support their attempt here, or if they did it with environmentalist energy policy laws, as Byrd has also identified as an example of misuse. I know they have to do it — we all can see that the GOP has to resist what the Dems try, but also that the GOP has been made irrelevent right now, and it's all up to the Dems.
The thing to do is to get the Stupaks (him and others opposed to abortion entitlement features in the bill of concern — there are likely other people opposed to other features as well) to concede, or find enough votes without the Stupaks, to vote to pass the bill no matter what objections they may have — because
a) They have to pass the bill as-is, as part of the reconciliation process. It's a formality they must respect.
b) Many, especially lib Dems in the House, don't like the bill. They know it's not what they like; it's a bad bill they have to pass in order to make any legislative headway in either house of Congress at all prior to November. They should be able to convince unhappy farther-left voters that it's needed to start passing more legislation. (I believe most smart farther-left voters would accept an “insufficent” bill like this for a reason like this, and wouldn't punish their member of Congress for voting Aye, but would for voting Nay.)
[shrug] Getting enough of them to hold their nose and vote for a bad bill is just a challenge Pelosi and Reid must meet somehow. (Having to leave it as-is means no more added bribes. Not now, with this vote. But later…?)
Also, I reject their misuse of reconciliation but how else do they get past the obstructions which include abuse of filibuster? Fifty per cent plus one versus sixty per cent (forty per cent veto) is the numbers battle here.
“On Charlie Rose, thanks for the pointer. I will check it out.”
She (Elizabeth Warrent) kicked ass on that appeance (hence she got quoted elsewhere from it — see below; you can remove this posting after noting and filing if you want). She had me even so motived I picked up a copy of a book by Robert Reich, someone who is far left, had a failed talk radio show before the left revived, who was derided as “the Marxist Midget,” but about whom I've softened a great deal. I'm a fiscal-type libertarian non-liberal (“conservative” is a misnomer in that sense) so now I'll be reading his book about the conservative Radlibs (that's me) and how mistaken and otherwise, other ways wrong we are. [grin] Keep Warren (“America Without a Middle Class” — no doubt she'd try to correct that trend),
get rid of Geithner, Summers, too. Warren as Commerce Secretary (more powerful than some bureau within Treasury). Even political hack Krugman is strong academically as an economist and might do well as Treasury secretary. Put Reich in somewhere. (Even Al Gore as new Interior Secretary only because there's no department of Natural Resources or the Environment yet…NO, NOT AS ENERGY SECRETARY! grrr)
Warren's generated interest here — examples:
http://www.chicagonow.com/blogs/chicago-politic…
http://seekingalpha.com/article/192246-elizabet…
Most of our presidential elections are won by just such slim margins. Remember Bush v. Gore? But we accept that as majority rules. I expect the dems can cut a deal that they will pass separate legislation to address the concerns of Stupak and his ilk. Yes, we need to reform anti-democratic senate traditions but, then, the senate itself is antidemocratic by constitution (2 from each state no matter the population) and Constitution. We find that palatable. Maybe we should accept reconciliation and filibustering, too.
I'll be watching Warren and Rose and reading the links. Thanks again for the pointers!
a) They have to pass the bill as-is, as part of the reconciliation process. It's a formality they must respect.
********
According to who, Dick Cheney? ….lol..
Wrong. Dems are in power now so they can do pretty much the same railroading that the GOP did when they had Congress under Bushco. In other words, expect the dems to have the same compassion for formalities and protocol as the republicans did for Congressional procedure and the Constitution.
Did you forget, dems have the majority?
“Did you forget, dems have the majority?”
The Dems are behaving as thought they forgot that. (They forgot all year what the voters wanted, too, which is why they've bound themselves as badly as they are bound currently.)
My understanding of reconciliation is that the House must pass the Senate bill as-is, without any changes, in order to retain the ability to pass with a simple majority in the budget reconciliation measure process. Any changes, from what I've been led to believe, would re-expose legislation to the filibuster in the Senate, which most believe would shut down legislation completely again.
“the reconciliation process is utilized when Congress issues directives to legislate policy changes in mandatory spending (entitlements) or revenue programs (tax laws) to achieve the goals in spending and revenue contemplated by the budget resolution [...] for tax reduction, tax increases, deficit reduction, mandatory spending increases or decreases or adjustments in the public debt limit [...] violations of the reconciliation instructions may be remedied through the adoption of an amendment on the Senate floor or the adoption of a motion to recommit the bill with instructions to report back forthwith with an amendment containing legislative language which satisfies the original instruction [...] no amendment is in order that would increase spending or decrease revenue levels relative to the base bill without equivalent decreases in spending or increases in revenues. In other words, amendments must be deficit neutral. Also, non-germane amendments may not be offered to the package absent a waiver from the Rules Committee. [Okay, get a waiver so health care measures can be voted on. -- DLS] [There are] restrictions on the content of a reconciliation package and on the amendments which may be offered to it. For example, any amendment to the bill that is not germane, would add extraneous material, would cause deficit levels to increase, or that contains recommendations with respect to the Social Security program, is not in order. [...] The Budget Act also maintains that reconciliation provisions must be related to reconciling the budget. For example, section 313 of the Budget Act, more commonly known as the “Byrd Rule”, provides a point of order in the Senate against extraneous matter in reconciliation bills. Determining what is extraneous is often a procedural and political quagmire navigated in part by the Senate Parliamentarian. The Byrd Rule and other points of order in the Budget Act may only be waived in the Senate by a three-fifths vote. Furthermore, [But, the Dems will likely proceed with this, if the waiver on extraneous health care legislation is secure] the Budget Act prevents reconciliation legislation from being filibustered on the Senate floor.”
“Once a reconciliation bill is passed in the House and Senate, members of each body meet to work out their differences. A majority of the conferees on each panel must agree on a single version of the bill before it can be brought back to the full House and Senate for a vote on final passage. Approval of the conference agreement on the reconciliation legislation must be by a majority vote of both Houses.”
“the same railroading that the GOP did”
If reconciliation was misused for welfare reform, technically the Dems can arrange to do it for health care “reform.”
The main thing is they need to get past the GOP filibusters. (Not just health care, but on subsequent legislation — hopefully the Dems realize that. Not just a one-shot thing and the GOP apologizes and lets the Dems do whatever they want forever after, but being ready to be like Reagan in Libya against the GOP filibuster here and now: “Today we [Dems] have done what we had to do [i.e., reconciliation]. If necessary, we shall do it again. It gives me no pleasure to say that, and I wish it were otherwise. …”
If the GOP abuses procedural device X, the Dems can (bad as it is) abuse device Y to get past the GOP X.
In case people don't know, Wendell Potter has appeared many times on Countdown. That's where I know him from.
“I expect the dems can cut a deal that they will pass separate legislation to address the concerns of Stupak and his ilk.”
It seems to me, though, that the compexion of the House Dems would argue for the opposite kind of legislation. (That's what they can be told to wait for later, while holding their noses and voting for the current legislation now.)
“the senate itself is antidemocratic by constitution (2 from each state no matter the population) and Constitution. We find that palatable”
Some do not and it's interesting to review their ideas (other than plain abolition, which is what I would suggest if they detest the Senate but really don't have a strong or good idea of something else in its place).
My spare copy of Tugwell's big book on constitutional reform is ready for me before I have to run to a health care thing tomorrow afternoon (I'll read the book after Charlie Rose finishes or if it has something boring on) and I'll enjoy his review of what's needed for both the House and the Senate (which he made into a central, super-powerful aristocratic-elitist organization acting on behalf of the nation as a whole, even more than the changed House of Representatives with at-large members). For your information, Tugwell also wanted the states reorganized each with at least five per cent of the total nation's population in each (reducing the size-disparity “anti-democratic” complaint).